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Restless Soul
Alex Archer
In 1966, a group of battle-weary American GIs trekked through the Vietnamese jungle knowing each step could mean facing the enemy's guns. But instead of ambush, they stumbled upon a hidden treasure beyond their wildest dreams. It was a discovery that exacted a terrible cost.A vacation spot picked at random, Thailand is intended to provide relaxation time for globe-trotting archaeologist Annja Creed. Yet the irresistible pull of the country's legendary Spirit Cave lures Annja and her companions deep within a network of underground chambers–nearly to their deaths. The ancient burial sites have slumbered through the ages. Yet no rest is found there–just the voices of the dead. When the dead speak, will they help Annja uncover the perplexing past of a remarkable find or will they call her to join them?
“Annja, come on! Move!”
Annja watched the water. It rose noticeably in the passing of a few heartbeats.
She cursed silently. When she started out that morning, it hadn’t crossed her mind that all the rain would affect her exploration of the caves. She should have considered the possibility. She should have realized there could be flash floods. Being on vacation had made her mind numb.
She glanced at the nearest coffin, then back at the water. The river could conceivably reach the coffins or perhaps completely cover them.
No doubt this chamber had flooded in the past what with the annual rainy season and the monsoons. Perhaps the rising river was the explanation for no bodies…the water had washed them away and left behind only the heavy teak coffins and the most cumbersome pieces of pottery. Maybe the water had even rearranged where the coffins had originally been placed.
She hadn’t imagined the voice. She heard it distinctly now. It hadn’t come from the coffins, though. It was as if it had traveled through the very stone of the cave and seeped into her head. It echoed like a child calling down into a canyon.
Free me…
Restless Soul
Rogue Angel
Alex Archer
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
THE LEGEND
…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER. TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.
The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade.
The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.
Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.
Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn….
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Prologue
Vietnam, July 1966
At first, he hadn’t minded the sound of the place.
He was Bronx born and raised, and the constant insect chorus of the Vietnam jungle was an interesting oddity and an almost welcome change from the frequent sirens and ever-present racket of traffic back home.
The birdsong, the swish of the big acacia leaves in the breeze and the occasional chatter of monkeys…it was all a pleasant diversion from orders barked by commanding officers and the grumbles of the men in his rifle company. He even liked the smell.
But that was more months ago than he cared to count.
Now the sounds blurred into a hellish cacophony that he had to pick through to listen for branches snapping, footfalls that weren’t from his men, the metallic click of machine guns and rifles ready to fire. Now the place reeked…of mud and rotting leaves, of things his imagination wasn’t vivid or brave enough to picture, and sometimes of decomposing bodies that neither side had retrieved.
Sergeant Gary Thomsen had learned to hate summer and the jungle. He hated the trails tangled with plants that grabbed at his heavy pack and all his weapons. He hated the sweat running down his face as plentiful as rain. He hated the fear twisting in his gut that someone was hiding around the next tree ready to kill him. He hated everything about Vietnam and the goddamn war that the politicians in the States wouldn’t call a war. A police action—was that the latest term?
He hated the leeches most of all.
He knew that they were clinging to him now. They were somehow always able to find their way up his pants and under his sleeves, into his boots, so they could gorge themselves on his sweet American blood. He’d led his men through brackish ponds and across streams and along a riverbank that morning and well into the afternoon, so there would be leeches on everyone.
He wanted to strip and pull the leeches off, but that would have to wait. There was another three hours or so left of what passed for daylight…the canopy was thick and not much sun was getting through. He had his orders to reach the firebase before dark and regroup with the rest of the platoon.
“Sarge…”
Gary scowled that someone had broken the relative silence. He turned to Private Wallem, a gangly hawk-nosed Texan who was pointing to just north of the trail. A body, mostly bones and scraps of dirty cloth, lay under a big fern.
“It’s one of theirs, Sarge. See? You can tell by the boots. Wonder if we got him or the jungle did? Guess it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s one of theirs and not…”
Gary shut out the rest of Wallem’s words and fixed his eyes on the body, angry with himself that he hadn’t spotted it. Not that it was all that interesting or all that important. But nothing used to get past him.
He’d set himself as point man for the patrol. The squad leader wasn’t supposed to walk point. He was supposed to take the second position. But Gary thought he had the keenest, most experienced eyes, and he wanted to be up front.
There was just too much green. He’d spent too many days in the jungle, and there were all those leeches, attached to his flesh, distracting him.
A good point man should have seen the body and not let anything distract him. What else had he missed? he wondered.
“War is always the same,” Gary thought, quoting President Lyndon Johnson. “It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world.”
The quote had stayed with him because Gary was sure he was going mad.
Johnson had said the words six months earlier, back in January, shortly before Operation Masher, a large-scale search-and-destroy operation against North Vietnamese troop encampments, began. Johnson had then changed the name to Operation White Wing, which didn’t sound quite so aggressive.
Gary and his men were a part of it, in the Bong Son Plain near the coast. A little more than two hundred American soldiers had died, but almost six times that many North Vietnamese. Gary thought maybe he’d get to go home after it ended, but his sergeant was one of those Americans killed, and he was assigned another tour, promoted to E-5 and given his rifle squad of ten to lead.
The leeches would get some more of his sweet American blood.
“Leave it alone,” he said of the corpse. Sometimes the enemy rigged trip wires and explosives around bodies. “Keep moving,” he ordered.
He checked his compass. West, definitely. They were humping due west on an established trail. It took too much effort to hack straight through the jungle; everything grew too tight.
He’d look at the map again in another few minutes. They were hard to read, the maps. He navigated mostly by gut instinct and the compass.
He heard the steady tromp of the men behind him, the annoying but comforting buzz of insects. The insects rarely quieted. They didn’t seem to mind the presence of soldiers from either side. When they did go quiet, that was when fear seriously twisted in his gut.
God, but he wanted to go home.
A sound like thunder, muted and distant, rumbled. It was a bomb, he knew, from a B-52. The planes carried up to a hundred, dropping them from as high as six miles up. The U.S. regularly bombed North Vietnam and lately had been hitting oil depots around Hanoi and Haiphong.
Gary had read somewhere that Senator Robert F. Kennedy had criticized the president for the bombing, saying the country was heading down “a road from which there is no turning back, a road that leads to catastrophe for all mankind.”
As far as Gary was concerned, there’d been no turning back since the U.S. brought the first planeload of soldiers. He wished they’d bomb the whole damn country into oblivion so he could go home.
There was the thunder of another bomb, coming from even farther away.
Wallem started to speak again, but Gary cut him off with a quick chopping motion of his hand.
Between the sounds of marching and insects buzzing, he’d heard something else, a spitting sound, a sustained whisper that he recognized as machine-gun fire. It wasn’t terribly close, but he prayed it didn’t come closer.
He held his breath and sensed that his men were doing the same, and he gripped the stock of his rifle tighter. He didn’t want to engage any Vietcong, but those were part of his orders—dispatch any VC patrols on the way to the firebase.
The sound came again. Four or five machine guns, he guessed from the bursts. He couldn’t tell which side was doing the shooting. Didn’t matter, did it? The enemy was involved, to be sure.
It suddenly became quiet again…quiet except for the insects.
“Move out.” His voice was so soft the men directly behind him had to strain to hear.
Gary picked up the pace. His legs ached with the punishment of too many miles, but he forced the pain to the back of his mind. Just another hour, two at the outside, to reach the firebase.
Maybe he should call for a five-minute rest, get rid of some of the leeches. Then it would be easier to press on to the base so they could regroup with the others, get rid of more of the leeches, sleep before falling out the next day on some new asinine mission the higher-ups had concocted.
He cut through a particularly tight weave of trees where the trail narrowed, led them through a stretch of marsh and was just about ready to call for that blessed five-minute rest when he spotted something that hadn’t been marked on his map.
“Sarge, what is it?” Private Wallem said. “Sorry!” he added when he realized he’d spoken above a whisper.
Gary glared at Wallem, then turned back to what he’d seen.
Right in front of them was a building of some sort, definitely an old one. The jungle had practically swallowed it. Vines were thick on the columns and what was left of the walls. Most of the stone was stained green, but there were patches of white here and there, and he could see worn symbols that he suspected had once stood out quite prominently.
“Maybe a shrine,” Gary said. The country certainly had enough of them. They were Buddhist, right? They worshipped the smiling fat guy with the bald head, he thought.
Almost half of the building looked intact, and there was an opening midway down the greenish stone. The door, if there had been one, had been eaten away by time and the jungle, and the opening that was left looked like the yawning mouth of a serpent.
They probably had an hour or so left to get to the firebase, if he wasn’t off course. Maybe a little more than that, maybe two at the very outside he was sure.
